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life with Down syndrome and Sotos syndrome!~~~~ Perfectly normal lives!

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Saturday, December 24, 2011

Our hearts for adoption

We've come home with 11 previous adoption bundles of joy over the last 29 years. All from America. One was abused way beyond what a mother should ever do to the gift God gave her. Others were hurt emotionally. Some were given to us after birth. Each one precious. Each one sent from God. I used to tell my oldest girls (Shirley and Angel) that some lovely woman somewhere was carrying my baby! :o)

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I tell people all the time, that God already knows who will birth the child and who will parent the child. Because it is His plan, not ours. He is the creator of adoption. He adopted us. None of us belong to each other, we all belong to Him only. He orchestrates our lives and allows us to make choices. The choice of adoption or being adopted by God is beautiful!

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It crushes my heart when I hear those who were adopted say some of the cruelest things against adoption, out of their pain. I understand the pain of being raised by parents who aren't the best. I was never adopted and my parents were not good parents. But I don't speak out against "birth" parents. As adoptive parents we are criticised easily by lots of people. We are expected to be more perfect than birth parents. Birth parents can have excuses. But because we "chose" to parent, we shouldn't have flaws.

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Is that fair? Is it fair to tell me I failed my daughter as a parent because we aren't the same color? Because I didn't give birth to her? Should I need to have Down Syndrome to raise a child with DS? This is so much silliness that causes pain and division among us.

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Is it fair to say that if my grown birth son doesn't speak to me because of his mental illness, that that's his choice. But if my adopted adult son doesn't speak to me because of his mental illness, I must have done something wrong in how I raised him? I mean seriously, I've failed everyone because I'm human, not because they are adopted or birthed by me.

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Even with all of that. I too had my own prejudices in adoption. I thought that we should only adopt here, in our Country. Our children here needed us first. I was fine with sending money to other Countries to help orphans. But to go all the way there and bring one back, when a child here waits. Nope.

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So in 2009, with our youngest child 5 years old and our oldest child 33 years old we thought we should adopt again. And we prepared ourselves. Each child has added alot of work and changes in our lifestyle. So we needed to think about what we would be able to handle at this stage of our lives. As we were considering, children were becoming available and we were asked if we wanted to submit our Home Study. Of course we did!

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We also called adoption agencies and asked. Even agencies that had placed with us before told us our family was too big, we were too old, the "square footage" of our house was too small, homeschooling would frowned upon. We were crushed.

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No wonder there are waiting children here in America. In fact in our sate, the next target group they are "considering" to target, to adopt these waiting children are- single career women. Nope, not "old" people. And yet we have the experience and time needed.

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The government has destroyed adoption as we knew it. 29 years ago when we started, in the early years if you had the love- you adopted. We have had to use the amount of square footage of our house to qualify as a licensed Group Home, or for a Foster Care or Day Care license. But adoption had always been- take your blessing home, love them and they will share the same square footage your other kids share!

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If you love them, who needs square footage? The hoops they wanted us to jump through this time excluded us over and over. On top of all of that our Social Worker was not doing much to help us! She ended up getting removed from the agency. We think she was prejudiced.

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But that was God's plan! :o) God knew that we needed a heart adjustment regarding International adoption and orphans. So He kept leading me to http://reecesrainbow.org/ . My heart needed to be softened because we were never going to adopt outside of the Country.

Our hearts were always wanting to adopt a child with DS; because of the many children and adults with DS we have and still care for in our home. Two gifts/children we adopted who had/have DS. (one now in Heaven) So the faces of the children on RR with DS kept calling to us.

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Then we saw that the beautiful Country of Bulgaria had no age limit and large families were welcome. We were in love! The rest is history. But we had to have a huge heart adjustment to realize that it did not matter where our child was. We couldn't be "adoption snobs" if our hearts were really for adoption. We needed to go where God sent us. I remembered thinking we were like Jonah not wanting to go to Nineveh. Because we did not want to go to Florida! LOL! But now Nineveh had moved all the way to Eastern Europe!!

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God sent us Julius and Pauly.

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If you've never adopted Internationally, I don't even have words adequate to describe it to you. If you've never adopted an orphan from an orphanage, you just can't even imagine. Just do it. You'll be glad you did!

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People ask me every day. "How are the boys doing?" And I tell them I don't know where to start. These boys are so special, so very very special. These boys are the easiest children to love that we have ever parented. It's not their DS. It's not their ages. It's not their personalities. I wish I knew what it was. Whatever it is, it is from God. Even through all of the hardships two little boys from orphanages bring. There is this overwhelming urge to just LOVE them as they are. No expectations. I wondered allowed to a friend once that maybe it's because they NEED so much love. They are like huge sponges, soaking up all of the love you give them. They never learned to ask. They used to push us away. But now that they know we aren't going to stop loving them. They just soak us up each and every day. It is so wondrous and joyful to experience. And to think we almost missed it because we didn't want to adopt from another Country.

5 comments:

There is so much craziness involved in adoption from within the US. I hear so many sad stories. So many children waiting while family after family have their homestudy passed over. It just does not make sense. :(

ugh! typos! blogger won't let me edit my posts on my "new" computer! I can't believe I spelled aloud- as allowed!! The homeschool mommy in me is cringing! LOL! Oh well! I guess I got my point across!Whether from USA or any other Country, we are all God's children!(((HUGS))) everybody!

Brenna commented here but when I clicked "publish" it it disapeared! UGH!Here is her sweet thoughtful comment-~~~~~~~~~ Beautiful, Elizabeth! I'm so happy your precious little fellows are enjoying Christmas with your family, right where they belong. And I can't wait to hear your new little guys will be home soon soaking up all that love. May God bless you all! Hugs! ~~~~~~~~~~~~Here is Brenna's beautiful blog link that you would have been here if blogger had let it be published!! http://pecanbluff.blogspot.com/